When she followed Rhea to the door, it was already ajar, the foyer occupied with four people. There were two Keepers, masked, and Fel and Abigail, bound to chairs. The painting had not done Abigail justice. She was older than Merrill expected, and she held her chin higher, despite those looking down upon her and the gag wadded in her mouth.
When Rhea spoke, it was with clarity, great weight upon each of the words, as if she were making a proclamation.
“You have been absolutely forbidden from growing ember's core,” she stated, her voice cutting through the air. “And yet you have decided to do so against my very orders. Such a crime must be punished. There must be an example made to prevent such an action from happening again.”
“We had received orders from Bernard prior to his death, and no other instructions since then!” shouted Fel, before a Keeper stuffed his mouth with a gag as well, and Rhea continued as if she had not heard them.
“However, this poorly coincides with my own plans. I cannot kill or injure you, Fel, without frightening the other gardeners into avoiding all Keeper interactions. That being said, some rumors would be beneficial. Some healthy fear. So it is not you I plan to remove.”
Her eyes slid from him to Abigail, seated and bound in the chair next to him.
“It’s her.”
The two Keepers seized Abigail’s chair and started dragging her backward into the garden. Fel thrashed, the bonds cutting into his wrists, the gag rendering all words incomprehensible. Within the assistant’s body, Merrill’s face contorted, her fists clenching as she looked on.
“Accidents happen,” said Rhea, her voice harsh. “Especially in a garden like this, with so many dangerous plants.”
Abigail struggled, trying to call out, as Fel’s rocking knocked his chair over.
“Right him,” commanded Rhea. “And bring him here. He needs to see. Ah, as I was saying, such dangerous plants. Like the ember’s core that was prohibited.”
She reached down, picking at a stalk, deft fingers avoiding the bud that would burn her. Donning a pair of gloves, she ground it between her fingers, sparks showering down as she reduced it to powder.
“I have heard of your skills. I see that they were not exaggerated,” said Rhea. “But regardless, this is what happens when you disobey the Keepers. This is the consequence for such hubris, for overstepping. You are but guests in our house, beholden to our rules, and you have disobeyed me.”
Reaching her hand out, she started to draw in the air, the runes taking shape, glowing in the dark night as the aurel left a bright red trail. Around her wrists, two bracelets studded with kernels started to glow with feverish intensity.
“Prices must always be paid, no matter how high,” she said, and she released the runes, fire streaking out away from her. But this was no normal fire. The conjured flames were not red, but white hot, concentrated in a thin burst aimed directly at Abigail’s heart.
She did not have time to scream, and Merrill supposed that may have been merciful. The flames consumed her entirely in under a second, leaving nothing behind but charred bones. Fel sobbed, his head on his chest, his bonds still tight. Rhea stood over him as Abigail’s remains still smoked, her voice low.
“I am the Keeper of your life. It is mine to take and to give, outringer. Never forget that.”
Once more the scene faded, the fog wisping away, leaving Merrill shaking, the scent of burned flesh still in her nostrils and tears streaming down her face from watching Fel. The knower’s voice spoke again.
“After that, I can’t say I blame the assistant for running. Unfortunately, I was never able to follow up on whether she succeeded. Perhaps that knowledge will find me in the future. She had the money, but Rhea is fond of her accidents, and her assistants never last long. There’s a reason they are always outringers—not under Keeper law, you understand, and therefore easier to be disposed of.”
“How can you watch something like this happen?” asked Merrill, her hands clenched at her side. “You have the knowledge, why do you not bring her to justice? How can you just sit here silently?”
“I am confined by the bonds of my circle, young one. Not just physically, but mentally as well. I cannot take action against the Keepers of my own accord.”
“Then how could you tell me this? Surely you know I’ll seek revenge.”
“This was simply a trade. I knew the knowledge to exchange for Hell’s barb, and I took it. So far as I understand, nothing I did was against the Keepers, but rather for personal gain. What you do with the knowledge I have given you is extraneous, beyond me. It was simply the price you would have demanded. I may barter, even if it is not in their best interest.”
“I won’t let the knowledge go to waste.”
“No knowledge is wasted unless it is hidden!” exclaimed the knower. “But young one, there is something you must know. Do you understand why I am bound here?”
“Because you can tell others where to go in the Tower, since you remember everything?” guessed Merrill.
“Partially, but a far less impressive spirit could do that as well. No, young one. I am a security measure. Should anyone enter with intentions to harm the Keepers, I am bound to inform them. Anyone, including you.”
“So are you going to tell on me now?”
“From my knowledge,” said the knower as the world around Abigail faded, “you were exiting the Tower now, not entering.”
The guide left Abigail outside the Tower. This time, no cart took her home, leaving her to walk in the dark. She kept her eyes on the shadows that occupied the corners, starting at any movement, wondering if any contained Keepers out to strike her down, or if it even mattered. If they had entered Fel’s house once, they could easily do it again.
On the forefront of her mind was the timeline set by Rhea until she had to act.
“You have two weeks,” she had said. “And that’s being gracious.”
Chapter 39: Merrill
The signs the Keepers left for Merrill were not subtle.
That night, after returning home, she couldn’t sleep. Every creak as the house shifted, every scratch from the wind blowing tree branches against the siding, every scampering of a mouse on the roof could have been the Keepers coming to finish her off. In the streets, glass bottles broke; on any other night she would have dismissed the sound as the local drunks, but that night she could have sworn they were shattering against her wall
Before dawn she increased her defenses, despite their futility. She checked the locks, wedged a chair under the door clasp and dragged a heavy dresser in front of the door. She balanced stacks of dishes precariously on top that would crash to the ground if disturbed. Bells went up on every window, as well as on wires through the hallways. She planted more ember's core around any entry points to the garden, though by the time they developed, the Keepers would be done with her. She prepared fantasies in her mind of fighting back, or hiding, or escaping when they finally came knocking.
But a nagging voice reminded her that when they did come for her, it would be like facing a pack of lions. First, she was outnumbered. Second, with their runes they far outmatched her, even if she were to spend years in training. Preparations could only help so much, especially when they could just be blasted apart by fire. A fist turned to ash lands a weak punch.
When she left her house the next morning, the dead birds left on her doorstep could have been from the neighborhood cats. The constant flow of messenger boys parting around her could have been a natural part of the crowd, but it seemed like each stared at her for just a second too long before continuing on their way and familiar faces ran past her multiple times in the same direction. When she went to the market, the prices seemed higher for her, as her favorite vendors ignored her or tended the other customers first while they waited for her to depart.
Merrill supposed she could be imagining it, but her subconscious insisted these were signs. Signs the Keepers wanted her gone and were intertwined into every part of her daily life. The sensib
le action would be to flee the city, and she would have, had Rhea not confessed to Fel’s murder. Now, anger and fear burned together within her, anchoring her until the Keepers came to regret Fel’s death.
After returning home, Merrill pulled the hell’s barb out of the cupboard, examining the plant as she considered. In all this time, it hadn’t changed at all. It was as if it were a fake, the lone deep purple flower atop perpetually blooming. Fel’s instructions regarding it were clear from one of his journals.
The entire bud, tasteless and scentless, to be powdered and added to drink within a week.
That meant she would have one opportunity for the poison to work; after cutting the bud, there would be no guarantee another would grow in its place. Then there was the timeline Rhea had set of two weeks before they came for her. Two weeks for her to plan and execute before they executed her.
With the knower on guard, entering the Tower would be fruitless. Merrill didn’t know the whereabouts of the Keepers beyond the Tower, and considering she was already being watched, surveilling them would be anything but stealthy. She could try to get lucky, try to find them walking the streets, but that was like jumping into an ocean in hopes of finding a shipwreck. Even if she could find them, she still had to poison them.
Agitation pushed on her from two sides—fear of her own death, and fear of her own failed vengeance. By the end of the first week, getting less and less sleep, paired with less and less remaining time, each of her plans turned riskier and riskier with desperation.
Perhaps she could bribe some Keeper to slip hell’s barb into Rhea’s tea, just as Rhea had done to Bernard. More likely, Merrill would be killed on the spot. If she could access the servants, that might work, but most Keepers never let their servants leave the inner circles.
She could try to disappear into the night and return for vengeance later. But if she fled, and they were watching, she would not survive until morning.
If she did nothing, Rhea would come to fetch her for the same reason as she did Fel. For greed and power lust, to eliminate her own competition.
And that would be Merrill’s moment to strike.
Merrill began collecting any of her plants she knew to cause harm. The ember’s core for fire; poisons, which she used to coat the sharp ribbons of goldleaf; sparkvine leaves, which when dried, burned so fast that they exploded with a pop. While she could not attack Rhea and survive, she could depart with both their lives.
Merrill pulled out an old cart of Fel’s and spent her days filling it with the concoction of plants. Ember’s core toward the center, surrounded by the sparkvine, and anything remotely deadly toward the edges. When they came to collect her, that would be her final gift, easily set off by the rags drenched in lamp oil hanging over the sides. No one near would survive, and she could only hope that the Rhea herself came.
There wasn’t enough there to cause any true damage—if she were to wheel it up to the Tower and ignite it, it would be like throwing a match against a stone wall. But flesh was far softer than walls.
She carved Fel's name in every piece of board, wood, nail head, or other fragment on the wagon. When it exploded, she wanted them to know why. If any piece remained, it would testify to his memory.
After the carriage was complete, she slept soundly for the first time that week and ate a full dinner to make up for the handful of pounds she had lost since departing the Keepers’ Tower. They would regret forcing her, Merrill, into a corner. Like a trapped rat, she would bite, with no regard to her future.
The next night she awoke with a start to the shattering of plates far below. She bolted out of bed, just as every bell that she kept on the windows started ringing simultaneously, in an orchestra of tones that sent jolts through her heart. That meant she was surrounded, that they were attacking on all sides, giving her no chance at retaliation, and the loaded cart was still waiting in the garden.
She sprinted down the hallway as the bells kept chiming, the ground lurching as the building bucked with an explosion.
“No!” she cried out. “No!” The cart must have gone off before she could use it to strike them down. Every chance at revenge evaporated through her fingertips, and when she reached the garden, her rage was enough that she would tear them apart with her very teeth unless they burned her as thoroughly as they had Abigail.
But when she threw the door open, the cart still rested whole in the garden’s center. There was no crater blown out around it, no burning fragments. The ground bucked again, and more plates fell from their shelves. The bells chimed again, and Merrill almost lost her footing.
Tremors, she realized, and she sighed in relief. No Keepers were here; rather, it must have been one of the earthquakes that struck the city sporadically. She’d heard talk of tremors in the past so strong that they knocked over buildings or parted the road with mighty cracks. These days it was rare that more than a few roofs would collapse. Exaggeration, many called it, though on old roads the patches to cracks could still be seen, some as wide as her armspan. There had been a week of quakes, perhaps a year before, that seemed particularly more violent than the others, but these had disappeared as suddenly as they had come.
She turned, ready to return to bed and sleep through any remaining aftershocks, when she spotted the red glow illuminating the upper edge of the garden wall. Squinting, Merrill fetched the ladder, climbing up to the rooftop and walking among the shingles. Another tremor shook, and she nearly fell as she held her hand up to the side of her head, blocking out any light below for a better view. Far away, red cracks formed on the Tower usually deemed invisible by night—cracks that spiderwebbed away from a point a quarter of the way up. They glowed like campfire logs left overnight, covered in ash but with coals peeking out from behind, flaring as wind struck the Tower face.
Below in the streets, dozens of others were exiting their homes, staring up at the same point as Merrill, murmuring and pointing at the thin trail of smoke while rubbing sleep from their eyes. Their lanterns lit the road, and in that view Merrill saw two figures in what would have been the shadows of alleyways, their eyes still fixated on her doorway except for furtive glances toward the Tower. Walking the perimeter of the rooftop, she noticed two more around the back, all of them dressed in black.
Her suspicions were correct—she was being watched around the clock.
Before she could return to the front, there was a sound like an iron dagger dragging across rock, a scratching from the Tower as the cracks flared with fresh intensity. A second explosion detonated, blasting enormous chunks of black rock out and away from the Tower, showering the buildings below with debris. A roof collapsed as a boulder twice its size crushed it, while another shard of stone pierced a city block like an arrow through hay. The murmurs below turned to screams as more buildings fell, the red cracks replaced now by a molten core, and the first of the creatures clawed their way through the hole.
Smoke formed in a thick cloud that poured from the hole, and the creature’s wings parted as it soared out with a screech of triumph and delight, looking down upon the city as flames trailed behind. No, not behind it, but with it, the entire creature constructed with tongues of flame, from its feathers to its red hot talons. When it opened its mouth, the fire there was the same color that Rhea had released upon Abigail, a white hot lance that streamed to the city below, incinerating anything in its path. With a turn of its wings it swooped low, and the crowds shrieked, scattering before the fire.
“A dragon!” shouted one as he fled toward the wall. Merrill squinted, shaking her head. This looked more birdlike than reptilian, and the flames were not the walls of fire described in the stories. They were too concentrated, too scalpel-like in their destruction. No, these were no dragons, but what they lacked in stature they made up for in number as a second crawled from the hole, then a third and a fourth like a pile of kicked ants. Within moments there were too many to track through the sky, fanning out from the Tower in random directions while painting fire paired with joyful song,
bleeding away from the Tower like a blot of ink on paper.
The crowd roiled, mothers ushering their children inside buildings, then out again as they looked to the timber that made up their walls, fleeing toward the city edge or into cellars. Some men took up shields made from anything they could find, from wheels to barrel tops, and fire pokers as spears. But no creatures flew close enough for contact, and the shields only served as targets as they spiraled above, the crashing of collapsing buildings now forming the bass notes to pair their high pitched melodies. One doubled back to the Tower, and a mighty water spout geysered up from the base in a flash of white and blue light, dousing the creature out of the sky. Sparks flurried away from its body as its flames died, the form beneath them far smaller, like a lion shaved of his mane.
More waterspouts sprang up, firing at the beasts as they swerved then swooped up and out of range. Lightning from the Tower followed, striking down any beast that dared approach the mid-level windows, crackling out as if the Tower itself were a stormcloud. Some fell, but more still roamed the skies, and Merrill noticed two approaching her general location from the left and right.
She turned, searching for the ladder, but the last explosion had knocked it away from the wall and back into the garden where it lay on its side. Rushing back toward the house front, she gripped the roof’s edge, dangling her legs over and finding the vines climbing up the side of the wall. They were thin, too thin for her to try to climb upward, but her fingers held desperately to the leaves as she began to slide down. She heard the screech as one of the birds swept near, its fire touching down in the street two blocks up. She could see the blaze from her height, but those below were blinded to the fire by a row of homes
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